Economist Brent Boehlert and his colleagues at MIT have issued a new report showing that curbing carbon emissions would represent a huge benefit for agriculture and the nation as a whole by reducing the frequency and severity of future crop-parching droughts and saving American farmers billions of dollars annually by 2100. The study is found in the July issue of Weather, Climate and Society. The study is interesting because the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change has been focused on the hard science side of academia. This is a group of economists who are adding an economic analysis supporting emission curbs.
The study estimates that large-scale climate action would save farmers about $980 million annually by 2050 while more modest cuts would net savings of around $390 million annually. The two scenarios would keep atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations below 500 and 600 parts per million, respectively, compared with 1,750 ppm without mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.
Droughts currently cost the United States between $6 billion and $8 billion a year. They are expected to grow worse in the absence of aggressive climate change action, particularly in other countries. The study found an overall benefit of $2.2 billion a year to U.S. agriculture from aggressive carbon emission reductions.
Source: Science News
pinandluller, Secular Progressives, like the rest of the world, have various religions. Some choose, the fundamentalist Church of Environmentalism. Others find Veganism to be their faith based best choice. A new religion for Secular Progressives is the Pentacostal Church of White Privilege. That is guilt based like Catholicism and Judaism.
Who’s going to make China curb carbon emissions? Even if they agreed to do it they couldn’t be trusted to carry it out-since China is well known as a corrupt and low trust society.
China is the ultimate statist society, the almost total centralization of political and economic power. What do you expect?
Annie
Lots of people are educated beyond their intelligence.
Nick
I guess that the Koch brothers are responsible for 20 years of no warming as well.
Speaking of Coke, how much CO2 do they put out?
Bill H. Your definition of economics is wrong. All that science is, is the quest to logically and empirically determine various phenomena. It can be the composition of a rocks or planets at the molecular level or why the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics failed economically and socially. Just because you don’t like the purported outcome doesn’t mean it’s pseudo-science as you’ve stated.
Hold every proposition with a light grasp, ready to surrender it when new evidence or better arguments are presented.
I’m not saying that this proposition is correct. It is most likely not. Scientists are always at risk of using bad scientific evidence or conclusions and using it to attempt to model other erroneous theories. Scientists have been found to be just as greedy and unethical as any other avocation of people, perhaps except lawyers and politicians often times one in the same. At these levels of study, it makes it even more difficult to discount a specific conclusion(s) because of the knowledge base one must have to make a valid challenge.
Annie
I have some short videos but they don’t last long. I guess LOL only works one way.
On the topic, Inhofe stars in a video where, as chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, he explains how the polar ice melting cannot cause the oceans to rise. He shows to the committee a glass of water with an ice cube floating in it. Then he goes on to explain that regardless of whether the ice melts into the water or remains as ice, the level will remain the same. Therefore the polar ice caps can melt completely away and the oceans’ levels will not rise. This is the man in charge of our planet, to a large degree.
The scariest part of the whole thing is that there are so many people that will watch this and, nodding their head, understanding this science and logic, believe that 99% of the world’s scientists are in some sort of conspiracy. These are the same people that will defend this inspired ignorance against any move to curtail the cause of Global Warming.
Who’s the “wit” that writes your headlines?
http://youtu.be/O0v1DTp0a10
Economics is a pseudo-science which invents mathmatical formulas to explain why prices did certain things so that they can pretend that they knew in advance that those prices would do those things. In order to lend themselves credibility, they find bandwagons onto which they can jump which are sufficiently established as to be safe for their reputations and to which they can put numbers using even more of their invented mathmatical formulas.
http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/10/29/worst-koch-funded-lies-about-climate-change-90-seconds
“The Koch brothers have spent far more than even ExxonMobil to spread doubt and misinformation about the 97% scientific consensus on climate change in recent years — over $67 million on climate denial, in fact. Out of 13,950 peer-reviewed scientific journals, only 24 reject global warming. But the Kochs and the extensive, well-funded network of front groups and media echo chambers would prefer that we ignore our responsibility to stay well below 2 degress Celsius of warming so that the Koch brothers and their friends can continue to profit from pollution-based enterprises.”
Proof of my point. LOL!
http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/koch-brothers-are-endangering-the-planet-by-funding-climate-change-denial/19209-koch-brothers-are-endangering-the-planet-by-funding-climate-change-denial
“The Koch Brothers, the most noted billionaires in the crusade to corral US democracy into an oligarchy, are back in the news for their funding of climate-denial flummery. In this case, according to The Guardian, they are making news for not revealing how much money they have invested in trying to debunk the reality of global warming:
The Koch brothers’ conglomerate Koch Industries has refused to comply with an investigation by three Senate Democrats into whether the company has funded groups or researchers who deny or cast doubt on climate change.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/25/climate_deniers_exposed_top_scientist_got
“A new investigation exposes how one of the top scientists involved in denying climate change has failed to disclose his extensive funding from the fossil fuel industry. Dr. Wei-Hock Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has downplayed global warming and rejected human activity as its cause, arguing the sun is more responsible than greenhouse gases from pollution. Climate denialists — including Republican Senator James Inhofe, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee — frequently cite Soon’s work to reject concrete action. But documents obtained by the Climate Investigations Center show Soon received more than $1.2 million from fossil fuel corporations and conservative groups over the last decade and failed to disclose those ties in most of his scientific papers. Funders include ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, coal utility Southern Company and the Charles G. Koch Foundation. In letters with his funders, Soon referred to his scientific papers or congressional testimony as “deliverables.” We are joined by the Kert Davies, executive director at Climate Investigations Center.”
This looks like a job for N. D. How long before a request is entered to pull this post?
There appears to be an inverse relationship between intelligence and invoking the Koch Brother boogie man.
How much are crop yields reduced by dropping C02 levels?
Hard science by the vast majority of climate scientists, yet we still have those who stupidly cling to Koch funded propaganda. The ignorance is astounding.
Decades from now the Environmental Fundamentalists will be shown to be the phrenologists of our era.
JT is still digging in his heels. JT is righteous in speaking out about the “Uber presidency” except when Obama does unconstitutional executive orders w/ EPA. Environmentalism is the new religion. JT is a bishop.
Agree that they should be curved.
And then there is this other point of view. On the one hand you have most or almost all of the world’s scientists doing nothing else but studying the issues. On the other hand you have the defenders of the status quo.
“People like JT, who are members of the fundamentalist Church of Global Warming, are using China as a way to try and scare us. They have begun recovering from the email hack scandal that should their “scientists” to be anything but that. This is Obama’s last “legacy” goal. And, he is doing it by executive action. JT has been righteous on calling Obama out on his “Uber Presidency.” Indeed, JT has sued the Obama Administration regarding Congress’ control of the purse strings. But, to date, JT has been silent on Obama’s executive action having the EPA put draconian regulations on the coal industry, basically eliminating coal by executive action. Yes, that’s the same EPA that just last week turned a Colorado river bright yellow w/ toxic mine runoff. Come to think of it, that would have been a good post w/ GREAT visuals. JT must have missed it while on vacation??”
Or it could just be Canadian logic, or perhaps simple universal logic.
On another not there is a great article in the NY Times today about gun nuts shooting up the public lands. They’ve already waxed a couple of hikers. But hey, it’s right there in the 2nd Amendment. Don’t tread on me.